The subject matter disclosed herein relates to turbine components for aircraft and power generation applications, and, more specifically, to turbine buckets including a base with an endwall contour, and an airfoil portion having a profile that can enhance performance.
Some aircraft and/or power plant systems, for example certain jet aircraft, nuclear, simple cycle and combined cycle power plant systems, employ turbines in their design and operation. Some of these turbines include one or more stages of buckets which during operation are exposed to fluid flows. Each bucket can include a base supporting a respective airfoil (e.g., turbine blade, blade, etc.) configured to aerodynamically interact with and extract work from fluid flow (e.g., creating thrust, driving machinery, converting thermal energy to mechanical energy, etc.) as part of, for example, power generation. As a result of this interaction and conversion, the aerodynamic characteristics and losses of these airfoils have an impact on system and turbine operation, performance, thrust, efficiency, and power at each stage.